What Looks Like Black

Ann Girard is a black woman, born to black parents. But she has blue eyes, straight hair and fair skin. Because of her own questionable features, she has experienced a problematic existence. Her life has now become even more complicated with the news of her unexpected pregnancy. Ann wants to be elated about her impending arrival, but is plagued with the overwhelming concern about a future filled with cruelties afflicted upon her firstborn child because of his or her features. Her unfeigned worry is rooted in her own awkward experiences based on “blackness.” As she prepares for motherhood, Ann chronicles her first memories as a child through her passage into adulthood, and describes how she was forced to adjust while being catapulted back and forth between black neighborhoods and predominately white environments, constantly antagonized and questioned about her true “blackness.”

As Ann records her daunting experiences of trying to belong, she undergoes a re-birth, thus redefining her philosophies of everything she ever knew. Readers are immediately pulled into this poignant tale based upon the complexities of intra-racial relations, as K. Broussard overlaps a heartfelt third person voice that details the experiences of an expectant mother, with an intimate forthright first person voice of Ann “speaking” to her unborn child about her own painful journey and discovery of what looks like black.